C3 Citizen Science

Get Involved!

Become a citizen scientist! Contribute to a real scientific research project! Learn about how climate change may affect our local redwood ecosystem as well as how you and your family can help protect it! Get involved in Chabot’s 3-year redwood ecosystem research project.

Project Description

Northern California’s coastal redwood ecosystem is unique on Earth. Global climate change has the potential to negatively disrupt this ecosystem in numerous ways. Disruptions in certain environmental conditions may more adversely affect certain "indicator" plants (flora) and animal (fauna) species of the redwood ecosystem. Winter rainfall and summer fog-drip moisture patterns may change as a result of climate change. Since salamanders, newts, and fern plants are especially sensitive to moisture levels, their life cycles could be disrupted. Also, as a result of climate change, seasonal temperatures could move into ranges that are not ideal for these plants and animals to continue thriving. Long term seedling survival rates might also be adversely affected.

Participate

Citizen science participants will be invited to explore the impacts of climate changes on specific indicator flora and fauna of the East Bay. They will help collect weather data and data on redwood forest indicator species over a three-year period. This data will be contributed to part of current climate change research being done at U.C. Berkeley’s Dawson Lab and by the Save the Redwoods League.

C3 Collaborative and Partners

Chabot’s project is part of a larger nationwide collaborative project called Communicating Climate Change (C3). Twelve science centers around the United States are participating in the C3 project. Check out the C3 website

Resources

Chabot Space & Science Center is located in the middle of two urban parks, Redwood Regional Park and Joaquin Miller Park, which provide easy access for researchers and counters to the redwood forest ecosystem where local indicator species can be monitored and potential local impacts can be considered and understood by our citizen science participants. Because Chabot has a formal partnership with the East Bay Regional Park District and the City of Oakland, this project also has the potential to be expanded to cover greater areas of the East Bay and redwood ecosystem at large.